modern China and Japan

[Rob_Hugo@PortNW]

I very much enjoyed reading Schirokauer's "Modern China and Japan". In particular I was fascinated with the discussion of the influences of the Portugese and French on both China and Japan. Especially in Japan the author discusses the contempt the French Jesuits had for the Portugese Franciscans or the "friales idiotas". The Jesuits used a top-down approach to proselytizing working with the Samurai while the Franciscans worked with the poor. The Francisans were therefore viewed as a threat to the social order. Why were the Samuri willing to accept the Christian influence at all and what affect did it have on Japanese religion then and today? And can someone explain Shintoism?

[Anonymous]

I don't think I can "explain" Shintoism, but I can point you in the direction of some online sources that explain the basics:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/shinto/

http://www.religionfacts.com/shinto/index.htm (scroll down a little, past the ads)

Basically Shinto is an ancient/native/indigenous religion of Japan that focuses on Kami, which are loosely translated as dieties. But Kami are less people and more creative forces. The religion mixes nature worship, fertility rituals, fortune-telling, and shamanism. There are no scriptural texts, no "founder", and very loose religious laws. Ancestor worship, respect for animals/nature, physical cleanliness, and devotion to the kami are the main factors of the religion. There are traditions and rituals, and the websites above explain about those. Shintoism and Buddhism are the main religions in Japan.

[Anonymous]

All ancient societies honored their ancestors in particular ways, unique to the indigenous people but having the common thread of respect towards the ancestors. The Romans and the Greeks had their ancestral/family worship with as much of an altar dedicated to ancestral worship as any Japanese or Chinese ancestral worship altar. The concept in Greco-Roman life was a bit more expanded and refined: it was the family, perhaps, more than the head of the family, the ancestor, which was glorified as a unit all-encopassing. The family became over-dominant in all aspects of social interactions and remains in many contemporary societies a most important component of society. I must say, however, that i find American social make-up evolving in a completely opposite direction. The American family has been going through an irreversible spiral of dismemberment and is being disintegrated formally, by legal means, and informally, by way-of-living. This involution of our society manifests an additional aspect of the poverty of societal development fostered by the capitalistic system we have being developing over the last 75-100 years.

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